Now the appointed contingent leader has started advertising for contingent management team members and I’ve started filling out an application form. I’m not sure if I’m crazy or not but my good friend John from the Birmingham Jamboree unit is applying and the chance to work on another big international project with John is something I quite fancy a chance at.  Here goes and hopefully I’ll be off to Canada next year.

PS. In BirmingJAM news the unit members are plotting to go to BrumJAM 2012 for a summer reunion and the youngsters are driving the process, which is great as most of their leaders are on various organising teams involved.

Some time in the way back when I had this idea.  I had seen good things about Gilwell 24 a camp for Explorer Scouts that runs for an entire 24 hour period and thought that it sounded like a great idea to strip down and run for the Scouts as a district camp. Except I don’t think I really realised how long 24 hours actually is.  My basic idea was that I would run the camp with a regular Friday night programme and then the 24 hour part would commence at breakfast on Saturday. I split the day up into 3.5 hour activity sessions and put bases on that would take 30 minutes (ish) to complete.  More bases during the day and early evening and slightly less in the early morning as some of the Scouts would give up and go to sleep.  I put a cinema on in a building on the site and held a midnight camp fire.  Nick my DSL took the Scouts off for a wide game at 1 in the morning.

Overall the camp was a success, the kids had a great time and I’ve had some emails thanking me for running it. But I’m not sure If I want to stay up for 24 hours again, well not for a little while anyway.

I’ll be spending the next week standing in my favorite place, behind the sound console.  I don’t get to be sound engineer very often as everyone assumes I’m a lighting guy when in fact I’m a bit multipurpose me.

Anyway you can still get tickets if you fancy a nice night out.

I’ve now got the ability to organise any event I want to for the Scouts in the District, I can in theory let my imagination run wild.  I’ve already started working up a number of ideas and fired up a good old fashioned mind map.

I’m now looking after and supporting 18 Scout Troops around the district, each with there own way of doing things, and different political issues to consider.  Out of all that I have to build a united team of leaders to provide quality exciting programme to the Scouts in the District.

Finally, in order to make any of this happen I have to step down from my Scout Troop.

Onwards …

My Scouting summer started with a weeks summer camp at Peak 2010, and while the kids did seem to have a good time they seemed very bogged down in rules and regulations.  We even had a kitchen inspection and where questioned about how we intended to cook the kids food.  They weather wasn’t very kind to us and the closing ceremony was almost cancelled due to the rain.

From Peak I headed back to Birmingham to drop off the kit, and then on to Buckinghamshire to Chalfont Heights campsite for the Buckinghamshire Guide centenary camp Bucks100Fest.  I arrived fashionably late but in time to do a bit of car parking, something that I repeated a few times.  As a Bucket I lifted, shifted and patrolled at all hours of the day and even sat in the sun and ate ice cream.  I lay on the floor next to a security barrier with Jess crushing my legs and guides sticking glowsticks up my nose during a fire poi demonstration and Hi-Fived so much my hands actually hurt.  And when it was all finished we ripped it all out packed it into vans and cleared up, but only after having a staff party.

I’ve got a few days to myself now and it’s a bit weird being sat at home in the quiet after the hustle and bustle of the last two weeks, but I need to concentrate on finding somewhere to live now.

Oh yeah and does anyone have some nail polish remover I could borrow.

While summer camp is a fairly laid back affair Bucks100Fest after means I ought to pack my belt of many things.  Really I should concentrate on packing my main bag but this is far more exciting.

I’m going to post a few and then tear them apart.

“Scouting could be relevant today, if only it got rid of the uniforms, religious references and outdated traditions which do much to turn people off.”

Scouting is relevant today 28 million members can’t be wrong. The uniforms give us a sense of belonging some thing missing today in the lives of young people if it wasn’t for the uniform and traditions we would just be another youth club with a broken pool table. As for the religious references all we ask is for leaders and helpers to have a belief, we don’t dictate from high that you must be a member of a particular group just that you should hold a belief.

“As an atheist who believes that a monarchy has no place in the 21st Century I see an oath “To God and the Queen” as absurd. There’s no reason why the Scouts can’t be a completely secular organisation and still uphold the values of honour and good citizenship at its core.”

Unfortunately for you the Queen is still the figurehead of the United Kingdom so the “and to the Queen” stays, however in countries that have no monarchy they generally make their promise to their country instead. If you where a young person in my troop I would of course invite you to explore atheism and to use it as a tool to develop. However It is a core of the promise and something which a lot of us hold on to. Just because you choose not to believe doesn’t mean that me and the other 28 million shouldn’t.

Most of the arguments come from left wing floppy wristed liberals who are too scared to discipline their own children that they end up on the endless stream of super nanny style programs on the television. All this seems to produce is young people that seem to want to stand on the street corner drinking cheap cider and smoking whilst swearing and being generally a nusence to everyone. whilst the left wingers stand around condemning anyone trying to do some good.  Yesterday evening I attended two presentations for the units from Birmingham that attended the Jamboree both where polite hard working groups of young people a tribute truly to their leaders and their country.

At the Jamboree 42,000 people from 200 countries and territories lived in peace and harmony. I think you will find that it is us in Scouting and Guiding that have got it right not the other way around.

Scouting and Guiding is a movement for positive change based around a really simple idea, a Promise. A promise you make to yourself, your family, your Scout leaders, and to the world.

On my honour
I promise to do my best
To do my duty to God and to the Queen
To help other people
And to keep the Scout law.

“We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to In this Centenary year, acknowledge the legacy of Sir Robert Baden Powell’s Scouting Movement.” Link